How can i Update helm? I need 3.17+

[Aaron-Ritter]

Summary

In 3.17 helm introduced fixes for handling oci repos, since https://bitnami.com/stack/postgresql/helm is pushing theses for all their charts my setup stoped working.

The version on my cluster is Version:"v3.9.1+unreleased"

And since I cant disable helm i am wondering how i can update it:

$ microk8s disable helm
Infer repository core for addon helm
Helm comes pre-installed with MicroK8s

What Should Happen Instead?

Be able to update helm.

Reproduction Steps

Install microk8s $ microk8s.version MicroK8s v1.30.10 revision 7730

try updating helm

Introspection Report

N/A

Can you suggest a fix?

Upgrade helm?

Are you interested in contributing with a fix?

yes

[Aaron-Ritter]

I found recently there was an update to v3.16 https://github.com/canonical/microk8s/pull/4771 but my 1.30 microk8s installation doesn’t include it, will this be backported and is an update to 3.17 planned?

[berkayoz]

Hey @Aaron-Ritter ,

Thank you for reporting this issue. We bump the bundled in helm version between releases, an update to 3.17 is likely to be included in the next kubernetes release 1.33.

As a solution you can install helm manually with the version you desire. After that it is just a matter of updating/creating the kubeconfig file at ~/.kube/config. As an example

mkdir -p ~/.kube
microk8s config > ~/.kube/config

After performing these steps you can use helm instead of microk8s helm.

[Aaron-Ritter]

Hey @berkayoz thanks for the update. This is a way forward I will try.

But this opens up the whole question about update of addons even further:

• My original concern about addons almost ~3 years ago was that the update process is already an issue for those which are "updatable": https://github.com/canonical/microk8s/issues/3392#issuecomment-1220613560.
• But now we have an addon which is packaged with microk8s and can't be updated or disabled either.
• Which leaves me addressing security concerns in helm like https://github.com/helm/helm/releases/tag/v3.15.2 only by upgrading to the latest microk8s version.
• Which then again leaves me with the issue that I lack a process of properly upgrading addons.

What is the suggestion by side getting completely rid of addons and handling them in a different manner?

[berkayoz]

Hey @Aaron-Ritter,

Thank you for bringing up good points. I might've been a bit vague in the general process for updates, apologies for that.

As I've mentioned before indeed we bump minor versions between kubernetes releases, which would include new features, bug fixes and so on. However this does not mean we won't backport versions ever, we do not usually backport versions to include new features. So for anyone requiring newer features they'll usually have to switch to a newer kubernetes release or follow upstream binaries/docs/steps manually.

For security/CVE fixes and critical bugs we do perform backports and bump versions in supported Kubernetes releases. I do see there are security fixes upstream, we can backport #4771 in this case. I'll bring this up to the team and keep you updated here.

[Aaron-Ritter]

@berkayoz Thanks a lot for the update, much appreciated! Glad to see that you’re considering backporting this particular change.

I solved my original issue by removing the Bitnami helm chart all together and replacing it with a kustomize setup. But I’m still using helm charts from other repositories and will be looking forward to a backport of https://github.com/canonical/microk8s/pull/4771 as others might start introducing OCI.

What should I do about the general issue of upgrading addons? Is there a point of creating an issue specifically about that?